


There is a light that never goes out

by fengtianshi



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, boy's from the wrong side of town, kurofai exchange, underage many things
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-16
Updated: 2014-08-16
Packaged: 2018-02-13 11:22:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2148894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fengtianshi/pseuds/fengtianshi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a crummy neighborhood in a nameless city where two boys, very different and yet not so bad assorted, meet, love and try not to ruin their lifes too much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There is a light that never goes out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cunttwatula (mindlessadri)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mindlessadri/gifts).



> Written for the [ KuroFai exchange!](http://kurofai.dreamwidth.org/72569.html) for Mindlessadri! Her wish I tried to fulfill was: "Boys from the wrong side of town trying to survive. Not get out. Just living their day to day lives in a bad neighborhood with their families while trying not to out themselves. (Think Ian and Mickey from Shameless; which yes it's my new show)"  
> I hope you like this! And I'm sorry it's incomplete, I tried THE HARDEST to write it all but the time slipped away from me and I wanted to give something to you in time! I promise you I'll complete it as soon as I can, enjoy what I manage to offer for now!

There is a reason why one keeps a bar close to where they sleep in this kind of neighborhood and it’s the same reason why children learn quite soon that a noise in their house at night  _is_  something they should be scared of.  Kurogane stopped being a child the day his parents died and hasn’t been afraid of things long before that. He’s sixteen now and looks even older and intimidating enough to be one of those the children might be scared of, so when the rustling noise wake him up he doesn’t jolt, he doesn’t panic, he just reaches under his bed for the rusty metal bar that he keeps with the care suitable for a sword from older times and slides out of his sheets into the darkness of the room.

From the other side of this blackness random cluttering sounds guides him toward the unlucky burglar. What an idiot, he thinks. Kurogane doesn’t have anything of value and people around here know him well enough to not attempt stunts like this even if he had. Must be a newbie. Too bad for them.

He raises the bar to strike but his target is not there when the blow hits one of his drawers, smashing it with a loud clash. They’ve dodged it. Unexpected.

His eyes adjust to the darkness around the silhouette of the intruder dodging his second blow and the third too, trying to get away from him and find their way to the open window that was probably their way in. He could have just let them go if they weren’t so bold to block the fourth stroke with their hands, trying to take the bar from him. That’s more personal. That’s a challenge. The adrenaline pumps through his veins and he pushes them against the wall, punches him still holding onto the bar with enough strength to prevent the other one from stealing it. That may have surprised the burglar because they can’t avoid the hit and the shout that fills the room tells Kurogane that “they” are a “he”. Somehow it gets messier from this point, because he starts kicking and his knee hits Kurogane almost on the crotch and at some point they both let the bar go and it clatters on the ground while their hands are on each other, hitting, holding, pulling and pushing. Trying to prevail over the other. Every children in this side of the town knows this harsh game and Kurogane has never lost once. He shoves the other to the floor and pins him there, one hand clenching on his wrist and the other threateningly on his throat.

Kurogane can feel under his own weight that the other is out of breath, he can sense the effort he makes to inhale and the tactile impression of his chest inflating franticly. The night is still thick, but his eyes are now accustomed enough to see the guy smiling.

“The fuck are you?!” he barks, a feeling of uneasiness creeping up his spine.

“Why do you care? Aren’t you going to kill me?”

That’s a whole new kind of blow that hits him. He knows the guy. No more than a week before he had noticed the blond lanky guy appearing and disappearing all around the neighborhood. He’d asked Fuuma who the hell he was for he surely couldn’t pass unnoticed and nobody he knows ever looked more misplaced there.

“Nobody knows,” Fuuma had answered him with a smile telling him precisely how much he was enjoying the mystery. “I heard he’s a runaway from the City.”

Kurogane had found immediately annoying the idea of a spoiled brat looking for some thrill in this slum and thought that he would probably last no more than a week, either scared back away to his wealthy parents or killed by any of the wrong guys he might annoy.

And in that exact moment he had looked up from the conversation he was having and had looked at him, directly and without any discretion. And smiling. He had smiled in a way that was completely new to Kurogane, that had gone up and down through all his all body, that had made him flustered and made him irrationally hate the guy. The very same guy that lies now under him, smiling to him and asking him if he’s going to kill him like it is nothing. Does he think it’s a joke?

Kurogane doesn’t seem to realize how awkward the silence becomes, he doesn’t move, doesn’t even blink. Just stares.

“Hello? How’s the weather up there?” the intruder smiles again.

This shakes him from the haze. He gets up and pulls the other harshly by the arm until he’s on his feet again too. “Quit the crap and tell me what the hell do you want in my house!”

His rough manners don’t seem to bother the other, he doesn’t make any more resistance, but even in the dark Kurogane can tell how ready for the action his body is just from his stance. “Didn’t you wanna know who I am first?”

“Are you going to tell me?”

“Not if you aren’t asking…”

“Look, you broke into my house—”

“I didn’t break anything, the window was open,” the idiot has the guts to punctuate. “Which was very irresponsible of you, really! It’s practically an invitation for any prowler, you don’t live in a very nice area, you know?”

“You _slipped_ into my house—” Kurogane barked to shut him up, even more angered by the fact that he fell for his provocation so easily. “—and I don’t like to be treated like a fool, so tell me.” He shakes him by the arm again to make his point clear. “Why shouldn’t I _really_ kill you?”

“Yes! That is a _really_ good question!” he agrees excitedly and Kurogane thinks that he hears a sarcastic imitation of his voice in that. “Why shouldn’t you?”

It takes him aback, the mad seriousness behind these words. He can tell the difference between a loudmouth and a psycho and knows that the latter is far more unpredictable. Dangerous.

“I’m sick of your shit, get the hell out of here!” he growls pushing him toward the window.

“Wha-? Wait! You can throw people out of your window!” he laughs, even if he starts to struggle.

“Not people, just _you_!”

“But I’ll fall!” he protests a bit more worriedly.

“Funny, for a moment back then I thought you were quite eager to die!” Kurogane snarls back at him.

“I won’t die falling from here! It’s just gonna hurt!” Real concern cracks into his voice and Kurogane realizes that he would have to fight again to really throw him out the bad way. “I thought you would have shot me or something!”

“Oh shut the fuck up!” he steps back from the window e drags the other toward the front door of his room. “Get out. Just get out.”

Kurogane pushes him outside gracelessly and stands tall in the doorframe, trying to look more intimidating than how he feels himself to be. The other may be still too shocked because it’s affecting him anyway, his eyes are wide and scared in the dim light of the corridor and he does not speak a word. “I wouldn’t wake any other lodger if I were you. Find your way out and get lost. I don’t want to see you again .”

He slams the door and doesn’t wait to hear the sound of footsteps from the other side. He’s tired, unaccountably so. He goes to bed. He shuts his eyes and thinks of blue. It’s a hard color to forget, even if he didn’t have the chance of seeing it again in this dark.

He doesn’t get any scrap of sleep for the rest of the night.

 

***

 

Not more than a couple of months after that night, they are on first-name terms or almost so and Fay, the blond burglar, reaches for the dial knob of Kurogane’s old radio in his room, giggling for the considerable amount of alcohol that’s making the simple task incredibly hard.

If somebody were to ask him, Kurogane wouldn’t be able to answer how this had happened. It just had. Days had passed since that first unusual encounter and the blond guy seemed to have vanished from their streets long enough for him to forget him. Then one day he was there with his friends when he arrived at a meet-up. He completely ignored Kurogane for the whole day and the thing unnerved him much more than having seen him again. It went like that for a week or more and just when Kurogane accustomed himself to his presence he showed up again in his room. He found him sat on his bed when he got home one night and was so shocked that lacked any reaction for the first crucial seconds during which the other started talking and ended up staying for at least an hour of useless chatter and shouting. He saw him again outside, in the streets, among his friends. And again in the small place that was his house. He never asked if he could come over, he just showed up. Kurogane went crazy enough to ask him to stay once and he flew as if he had offended him. Then one day Kurogane found food he didn’t buy in his  mini-fridge. Not that he always does that, the buying thing, but tries whenever he has the chance, because he thinks that his parents would be proud of him if once in a while he did the things according to the law. But along with the food he found Fay sleeping in his bed and no amount of shouts or threats could make him leave for an entire week. Since then it has always been like that. Fay sometimes comes and stays, he brings gifts he probably stole somewhere and after a day or two or a week he goes and Kurogane never knows where. Kurogane realizes he should be more annoyed with him, but there had been a moment, weeks ago, when he woke with Fay was moving around his small flat and the sound made his heart jump, but not his nerves. That little moment marked the transition from a series of unpredictable events to a routine. And it changed everything.

“Take me out~ Tonight~” Fay sings along with the radio, so loud that made his head throb.

“Shut up,” he moaned, hoping that another sip of the cheap wine Fay had brought with him this time.

 _Drink with me_ , he had said with childish excitement and hidden intention in his eyes. Kurogane felt heat wash down through his body even if he knew he should not trust the other so much.

“But it’s a beautiful song, Kurorin!” he whined. Kurogane had given up since the first week to protest for the names. Fay one day will probably get tired and stop on his own. Probably. He doesn’t want to look like he cares. “It’s about two people in a car being crushed by a bus! Which reminds me… do you have a car?”

“No and it’s not what the song is about,” Kurogane answers with a dry mouth.

“That’s why you never take me out…” Fay wonders with exaggerated amazement, ignoring the part of his answer that doesn’t interest him.

“We are always out together,” Kurogane points out, determined not to read too much in Fay’s antics when they becomes a bit too affectionate or allusive.

“And if a ten-ton truUUck~ Kills the both of UUUs~ To die by your SIIIDE~ Well, the pleasure~ The privilege is MIIINE~ ” Fay sings even more loudly just to spite him, Kurogane is sure. “See? It was a truck, but I was right!”

“Yeah, right, wouldn’t you know…” Kurogane reaches the bottom of the bottle and puts it down so clumsily that it falls down and rolls who knows where on the floor.

Fay tenses up without losing any of his drunken antics. “And what could Kuropi possibly mean with that?”

“Your stupid death wish.” Kurogane watches as Fay’s tension grows more evident and less drunk.

“You don’t know me.”

“No, but you’re not so hard to read as you think you are.”  And not as drunk as he wants to show.

Fay smiles a large, devilish smile and sprints so fast he almost couldn’t follow his movements. He kisses him. He’s on his lap, all pressed up chest to chest, hip to hip, and he’s kissing him full on the mouth. Kurogane is so surprised he ends up going through with it without questioning the sense of it. He opens his mouth against his and with a thrill discovers that Fay is quick with his tongue as much as he is with his words.

Fays ends it abruptly as he has begun, moving back with a loud smack and a satisfied smile on his wet lips. Kurogane watches him intently, passing his tongue over his own lips, trying to catch the aftertaste of bad wine and noting with another spark of excitement that this has caught the attention of Fay’s eyes.

“What the fuck was that?” he asks.

“I was proving my point…” Fay makes himself more comfortable on his lap and all Kurogane’s blood rushes where their bodies touches more intently. “You don’t know me.”

Kurogane’s hands find a way to the other’s hip to hold him there. “I know you.”

“Oh please!” Fay laughs breathily, clearly intrigued by the fact that he’s not rejecting this kind of intimacy. “You don’t even know what I was looking for the first day I’ve been here.”

Kurogane sees the glistening of the alcohol in the other’s eyes, but he’s not completely sure of how he would react, so he takes the first move this time and pushes Fay on the ground, keeping him there with his weight. “My gun.”

Fay’s eyes widens both for his back hitting the floor and his answers. It scares and angers him, it’s clear. Kurogane knows that he’s right. “How do you know?”

Kurogane smirks. He’s always so proud, not asking to be let go. “Fuuma told me. You’ve been digging around for days about it.”

It’s an old story, he doesn’t even know how it became such a tall tale. People keeps gossiping about it since the time he came to live alone in this building.

He has gun hidden somewhere, they say. He’s killed a man with it.

“Why didn’t you say anything before?!” Fay now shows more openly his anger.

“You never asked.” Kurogane always feels a little pang of contentment every time he gets to feed Fay his own medicine. “What do you want it for?”

The move is sudden and lent with such a force that Kurogane barely believes it was Fay’s endeavor. With a thrust of the back he pushes him off and rolls over him, trapping him down. “I’ll tell you if you give it to me.”

**Author's Note:**

> Since it's incomplete for now, here's a mini-fanmix I made for this fic as a compensation!
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> [Linkin Park - Cure For The Itch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPeYZo4xAME)
> 
> [Gorillaz - New Genius](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCIL3r136T4)
> 
> [Depeche Mode - Darkest Star](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6ijQpWABAI)
> 
> [Gackt - Lu:na](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRz2S9hoRys)
> 
> [Tori Amos - Liquid Diamonds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6_5YYTN7gs)
> 
> [The SMiths - There Is A Light That Never Goes Out](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-cD4oLk_D0)


End file.
